Red vs Blue Reentry
by MindfulWrath
Summary: The things that happened to Agent Washington, and why he is how he is.
1. Chapter 1

Excerpt from the Diary of Freelancer Agent Washington

_Sunday, March 21_

_ It's Implantation Day, officially now, even though I haven't slept since The-Day-Before-Implantation Day. It turned midnight about half an hour ago. It's not like I haven't tried to sleep. I just can't._

_ Even though I've been keeping this journal for weeks now, this is the only one I've actually wanted to write. I thought maybe it would help me calm down and get some sleep- they say rest is very important before Implantation. If your brain is too stressed or fatigued it doesn't take well and sometimes not at all, and they have to do it all over again. The only thing I can think of worse than Implantation Day is Implantation Day Take Two. Or maybe the implant not taking. I haven't talked to anyone whose implant didn't take, but mostly because Florida's dead now and I don't know of anyone else it happened to. I'll admit I was afraid to talk to him- it may have only taken a couple weeks for him to die, but they were a __tough__ couple weeks. After what happened to Carolina, mostly we don't talk about it anyway. North says everything will be fine, and Wyoming assures me (his words, not mine) that having one is a vast improvement on not having one, and that mine is a very standard operation with no bells or whistles, they've done it ten times before and it'll be fine, etc. For some reason this doesn't help. I can't stop thinking about Carolina, which they tell me is normal, but it doesn't feel normal. I know mine is a very different case- I'm only getting one implant, standard- but it doesn't stop me from worrying. Everyone changes after the implant. I suppose it's only to be expected, but I'm not sure I want to change, or at least, I'm not sure I want to change in the way the implant will change me._

_ Agent Texas- Tex- __came by today- yesterday, technically- to make sure I still wanted to go through with it. As if I have a choice. The Director insists on making us think we have a choice. Maybe it's the Counselor's idea, he seems to be the PR guy, but for some reason the Guys In Charge want us to think the whole process is optional. It's not. They wouldn't waste so many billions of dollars on the off-chance that half of us might refuse. Although I guess they could always go out and get more test subjects and kill those of us who know too much and refused the implants. There's no shortage of military minds out there, and they don't even need to be particularly __strong__ minds, although a strong mind helps. They say it helps- one more reason Wyoming says I'll be fine. Wyoming doesn't know me, not really. Nobody really knows. Tex is the closest to knowing, but even she only suspects. I think that's why she came to talk to me- she was hoping I would confess I was unfit to receive an implant. As if she could get me to spill information that a hundred psych tests and seven separate evaluations couldn't. And the people who do the evaluating are trained to look for instability. They __all __have a hunch that we're all crazy. I think probably they're right, but they've said so far that all of our sanities are within "acceptable deviations." (Is 'sanities' a word?) I wonder how many other Freelancers brushed up on their acting before the psych tests? Some people, like South and CT, would kill their own grandmothers to have a chance at an AI. I wouldn't, of course, especially not now. Now I'm starting to wish the evals and tests had turned up something on me. I almost wish I'd told South about . . . well, things._

_ All the time you're in the army they tell you to hide your emotions because they are No Good and A Liability, but the psychs were all pretty much agreed that I should at least put the feelings __somewhere,__ even if it was on paper, to get it all out of me. They make it sound like some kind of poison, or armor you can just take off and put away. So, okay, here it is, The Truth. I'm scared. No, scratch that, I'm terrified. I'm terrified something will go wrong and it'll turn me into a drooling vegetable, or it won't take and I'll be expelled from the program and/or die, or it __will__ take and it'll take over, like Arizona's. They tried to remove it but apparently it was in pretty deep, and although they did eventually get it out of him it took most of his brain with it, so now he's completely out of his mind and dumber than a bag of hammers and costing PF thousands of dollars a year by virtue of his pension. Not like he would notice if they threw him out on the streets. Not like he would be able to tell anyone. He'd forget all about this place and everything that goes on here inside of five minutes. On the plus side, he never gets bored, because the world is brand-new to him every hour, since he can't hang on to even the most memorable of memories for that long. Once I shot him (under orders. If it had been my idea I would have killed him and saved PF a lot of trouble and money). When I came back three hours later, he asked who I was and politely shook my hand, and realized he'd been shot when the bullet hole in his shoulder started hurting again from the movement. "How interesting," he said, "I've been shot!" I don't think I'll ever forget that, no matter how much I try. He was lucky enough to forget the whole thing by dinner-time._

_ The implantation starts at six a.m. sharp, so I only have four and a half more hours to lie awake inventing things that could go wrong. I can't quite get across what I've been meaning to say in this journal- maybe it'll get easier if I write more, like this, when I actually want to write and not because I've been ordered to. I'm sure they read it. There's nowhere I could hide it that they wouldn't find, so I don't even try. Hidden things attract so much more attention than things you leave lying out in the open, and, let's face it, they'd read it either way._

_ I'm going to try to sleep, although I'm sure I won't. I didn't ask Wyoming or North if they slept before their implantations. Wyoming probably did, but North isn't quite as cold a fish as he is. Hopefully Wyoming won't get wind of this- me calling him a cold fish (although there are much worse things I could and would be entitled to call him). I'll be dead by tomorrow- well, tonight, technically- if he does._

_ That was sarcasm, by the way. Because if the implant goes wrong enough, I really will be dead by tonight, or worse. Considering Carolina and Arizona, I think I might rather be dead, but so far no one has died as a direct result of the implantation process, certainly not instantly. (There's always Florida, but he was a special case, they tell us, because the implant didn't just not take but it decided it was really pissed about being stuck in somebody's head and went into a Godawful rage and destroyed everything it could. When Florida wasn't unconscious under the knife he was trying to kill himself and everyone around him. At least when he died the Chi unit went with him.)_

_ There's a first time for everything, as the saying goes. And much as the last few years have been hard (okay, terrible), I don't really want to die- that's one of the things they screen for, so I can rest assured I don't want to die even subconsciously. And I certainly don't want to end up stupid or insane (or both). I guess it really all depends on how stable the implant is. I think I should be all right, since the earlier ones seem to be more stable- Gamma and Theta are kicking along just fine, and York says Delta has been no trouble at all._

_ I guess all I can do for now is try to sleep and hope that my unit isn't some kind of fluke and hasn't malfunctioned- I'll just have to hope it's as stable as Delta and Gamma. It would be nice if they could research a little deeper into these AI __before__ they put them in our brains (viz Florida). But they're doing all they can to guarantee our safety (yeah right), officially, at least, because the law suits would be terrible if they didn't (at least pretend to) keep us safe._

_ They say Epsilon has been very stable all throughout the preliminary processes, so that's a good sign, if it's true. Do I really think they'd tell me if my unit was unstable? No. I think they'd stick it in my head anyway and watch the fireworks._

_ I was going to write more, but my mind has started really wandering beyond acceptable limits and I can't focus anymore. I'm sure sleeping would help, if I could sleep, but for now everything is too fuzzy to bother trying to concentrate on this journal._

_ Fingers crossed._

_ Oh, and one more thing. __David.__ There. That's in case I forget. Nobody remembers Arizona's name, not even the Counselor, who keeps a record. Either that or he knows and isn't telling anyone. Although I guess they would take away my journals if I ended up as much of a menace to the project as Arizona is, or at least as they think he is. He's only really menacing their budget._

_ It's almost two in the morning now. I have four hours to pretend to sleep. Might as well start now._

_

* * *

_

There was a reason they called the machine the Crown of Thorns, Biblical references aside. It didn't really look like a crown, and the thorns were actually high-tensile impossibly sharp carbon-tube needles, and there were only four of them, but it was reminiscent enough of a crown of thorns that no one but its creators actually knew its real name, which wasn't very catchy. The "Artificial Intelligence Unit Implantation and Integration Array" just doesn't slide off the tongue (even AIUIIA doesn't make a good acronym). But when Freelancer Agent Washington walked into the cold, blue-lit room and saw the machine up close and personal for the first time, at six o'clock in the morning on absolutely no sleep to speak of, it was fair to say that the machine looked _exactly_ like a crown of thorns and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he wondered if he was about to be crucified.

The machine- or array, as it was properly called- consisted of three main parts and a lot of wires. There was the headpiece, which consisted of four bent tubes of plexiglass with multicoloured filaments running through them, suspended from the ceiling on a three-jointed metal arm, a needle so sharp the point was invisible at the end of each tube. The needles were inserted into the forehead, the temples, and the base of the skull on the subject, although the needles were so sharp that they left no scarring whatsoever. This was connected by a thick bundle of wires to the second member of the assembly, the AI unit itself, which was hanging from another three-jointed arm (a much longer one) and had been fitted with a terrifyingly large needle that was inserted into a bundle of nerves at the base of the spine. The Epsilon unit was purplish, like a fresh bruise, and was shaped like a folded-up flower, with glowing lines of light down each petal, and it was purring like a very large or very sick cat. The third part of the assembly was the monitoring station, which was embedded in the wall and accommodated a pulse oximeter, a blood pressure cuff, several heart rate and galvanic skin resistance meters, a few stickies to measure electrical impulses in the brain, and a mild anesthetic drip that was remotely controlled, to keep the subject calm enough to make the process feasible without actually knocking him or her out. These were attached to a wide, LCD screen that displayed all vital signs in real-time and included indicators for acceptable limits. Odd, how none of the other Freelancers had really described the machine to him. Perhaps they just didn't want to talk about it.

Washington thought it looked like a torture chamber, although analyzing the room in such an impersonal way, as he had been taught to do in all stressful situations, protected him from some of the horror of the wicked-looking machines with their sharp needles and the threat of having some foreign entity forcibly injected into his mind. On the far wall of the claustrophobic little room (it was scarcely five feet on a side, and the ceiling was only about seven feet up) was a one-way window, which looked like a dim mirror on this side, but was almost completely transparent on the other. He knew he was being watched. It only bothered him that he couldn't watch _back_.

"If you'll wait here, Agent Washington, the implant team will be here in just a few minutes, sir," one of his escorts said. He wasn't sure why he needed an escort. Maybe in case he changed his mind.

"Right." he said, and almost begged them not to leave. He didn't want to be in that frigid room all by himself, not with those whirring machines and the cold blue glow of the recessed lights in the walls and ceiling, not with the Crown of Thorns dangling there, waiting for him to place his head in its jaws. He told himself he was being paranoid and instantly turned around and told himself to shut up because he had every right to be paranoid, look what had happened to Florida. But his escort left him alone in the room, and only a few minutes before he would have started tearing the machines to pieces because the door was locked from the outside (he was on the verge of trying to open it), the medical team came in and got down to business, their latex gloves making _squeak-snap!_ noises as they pulled them on. One of them took out twelve cotton balls and a plastic bottle of isopropyl rubbing alcohol and instructed Washington to remove his shirt and they would return it to him after the process was over. The Bad Feeling, the prickly coldness of the hairs standing up all down his spine, the deep headache and mild nausea were all getting worse, all telling him that He Did Not Want To Be Here, and he ignored them as he had been told over and over to do, because he was certain it was just the needles that were scaring him, because he had never liked needles. The MedTech then proceeded to attach the multitude of sticky monitors to Washington's chest, neck, ribcage and head, and clipped the little plastic-and-foam oximeter over the pointer finger of his left hand. He swabbed the inside of the Freelancer's elbow and, with a toneless countdown, inserted the anesthetic needle into the largest vein, the one that wandered so close and blue beneath the skin that it looked like a river on a map. Someone else positioned Washington beneath the Crown of Thorns and adjusted the rig until the invisible tips of the needles were a mere hairsbreadth away from his skin- and of course, now that he was hooked up to all these machines, his vitals were starting to look bad and he wondered if they would call off the implantation, half hoping they would and half wanting to get it over with, excited at the prospect of the power that was about to be placed in his hands. One of the MedTechs moved each arm of the Crown out in turn to swab the area directly beneath it with alcohol so concentrated it burned to the touch, including a large spot at the base of Washington's spine that he couldn't see but could feel as clearly as if the needle was already stuck into his nervous system. While this was going on, a third tech attached the blood pressure cuff to Washington's arm and checked to make sure it was running properly- the entire process had been automated in case of a dramatic failure on the scale of the Omega AI, so nobody else would get killed.

The longer Washington stood in the room, the worse he felt. The cold was sinking through his skin and the alcohol on his face burned like acid, and he couldn't stop shaking although he knew for certain it wasn't _that_ cold in the room. He watched the LCD of the monitoring display and tried to make all the little green lines of his brainwaves get less spiky, tried to slow the frantic pounding of his heart, tried to lower both numbers on his blood pressure readout and wondered why his skin was being such a good conductor (i.e. why he was sweating so much) when the room was so damn _cold._

"All right, Agent Washington." said the last MedTech as he packed up his little black plastic case. Wash hadn't even noticed the other two go. "You're all set. Just try to hold still, breathe deeply, and . . . well, just try to stay calm. Excessive stress never helps, especially when we're using a different . . . um, unit."

"Right." Wash said, a little more acidly than he had intended. The MedTech was lying through his teeth and they both knew it. This did not make Wash feel any better about the procedure. Something was significantly different about this implantation as compared to the others. Wash was beginning to suspect that not all Freelancers actually had AI implanted directly into their brains- else, how could Omega travel from suit to suit via helmet radios? "Thanks."

"And, good luck, sir," the MedTech said. Washington's face softened as he looked out of the corner of his eye at the kid- couldn't have been more than a few years younger than Wash himself, probably still in college- he couldn't move his head because of the needles- and when he said "thanks" this time, he actually meant it.

Then the MedTech closed the door, and the room just might have gotten colder, and Washington was all alone except for the Epsilon unit, the people on the other side of the glass, and the machine.

A speaker cleared its throat over his head and Washington very nearly impaled himself on the needles all around his head. It was only by extreme self-control that he managed to twitch only microscopically.

"Hello, Agent Washington." came the super-calm voice of the Counselor. "Are you feeling well today?"

"Hello, Counselor." Washington sighed, although he dearly would have liked to skip the formalities and get around to the terrifying part that was eating away at his courage. "About as well as I can be."

"I hope the anesthetic is beginning to take effect?"

Washington thought about it. "Sort of."

"We'll give it a minute, to be sure. Now, are you certain you want to go through with this? There is still time to turn back."

_Yeah, right,_ thought Washington. "I'm sure. I'm ready."

"Very good. Just to pass the time, the implantation process will take about a minute and a half, and the recovery time is usually between a day and three days for a standard procedure such as this one." _Standard my ass,_ thought Washington. "In the event that anything should go wrong, medical staff is standing by. I am obligated to warn you, if the Epsilon unit turns out to be . . . unstable, it is extremely dangerous to stop the implantation process. If the unit is somehow corrupted or fragmented during its implantation, for example if the process is interrupted, it will be extremely difficult to remove."

_And how do you know all this?_ Washington thought, and could see the question manifest as a spike on the brainwave graph. "I understand." he said. The tip of his tongue was tingling, and so were his fingers, and his heart rate had visibly slowed.

"Well, it looks like we're just about ready. Good luck, Agent Washington. We will begin shortly."

The speaker went dead with a soft pop, and the machines began to hum. The lights dimmed, and Washington could hear his pulse throbbing in his ears. The monitor emitted five soft beeps at single-second intervals- a countdown- and then the machines began to move.

This must be said about the Crown of Thorns: the needles were so sharp that it was actually impossible to feel them enter the skin, and unless they happened to touch a nerve and pierce it, the subject would never feel them at all. The AI was a different matter. Like a tiger driven from its cage, it raged out of its storage unit through the wires and struck like lightning at the five points of contact with Agent Washington's nervous system. This was normal, and he had even been told it would happen. He was prepared from the sudden shock and the pain of the AI clawing its way into his mind.

He wasn't prepared for anything else that happened.

The room went black and the pain was _everywhere_, and a glowing blue eye opened above him and became a gun and shot, and then there was gunfire everywhere and the ground was covered in bodies, and someone was dying in his arms, he could feel the blood drenching his hands and arms, could see the light leaving her eyes. Then he was falling, for what seemed like thousands of feet, and there was more pain, centralized in his mind, and he screamed and begged for it to stop and it did _not_ stop, instead it got worse, and for a moment he knew what they were doing to him and why- the torture, the endless physical and mental pain- and just as he came to fully realize it, as he couldn't bear the horror without going mad for another minute, suddenly all the knowing was sucked away, and he was plunged into confusion and darkness and there was more death all around him. The blue eye blinked at him again, and he screamed at it until his words became thick black bile that spewed from his mouth, and he couldn't _think_ past the rage, he couldn't function, and suddenly the rage was gone, too, sucked away like something pulled from a space ship into the vast vacuum beyond.

Suddenly he was in a fortress, surrounded by a small group of his closest friends and a huge mass of enemies, and his friends looked to him for help but before a single word could pass his lips the enemies were firing, firing so many guns that the muzzle flashes lit up the whole world, the sound was like an earthquake. The bodies of his companions twitched and flailed and spurted blood, and he ran at the enemies blindly, but they turned to smoke under his hands, and before he could even check to see if his friends were alive, his desperation and grief threatening to overwhelm him, those emotions were whisked away, too, and the entire world turned to smoke, and he was lying on a cold metal table and the blue eye was staring down at him, and trying to speak to him, but he couldn't speak. He thought of the way he had been, his childhood- golden fields and a stream, and the thick smell of hay and farm animals, and hot summers and harsh winters, and someone's hand holding his, someone carrying him to bed late one night when the fireflies lit up the fields for miles around- and suddenly all that had vanished, too, and he was left as a tortured man on a cold metal table for a moment more before his mind was jolted again and he was somewhere else.

_This isn't real_, he thought to himself, he screamed to himself, tried to convince himself and the world around him that he was just imagining, that these were _not_ his friends and their lives were _not_ in his hands, and when the lies he told himself had piled up enough they were whisked away, too, and he was left with the truth, the truth he couldn't analyze or grieve for or rage against, the truth he couldn't escape through memory or deceit, and he fell into cold water- water he could no longer pretend was fake- and began to drown, and rather than fight his way to the surface to watch his friends die one more time, he endured the pain of drowning and gave up.

And found himself back on the metal table, looking into the blue eye, and heard a distorted voice say, "Very good. The AI units have been successfully consolidated and removed, and are even now being processed. We are done here."

Something that might have been Washington's own thoughts screamed, _They tortured him! They tortured him to make these AI! They're murderers, they're __worse__ than murderers! LOOK AT WHAT THEY'VE DONE!_

He was never certain what had happened that day. One moment these horrible memories were flashing through his head, and the next he was tearing the Crown of Thorns from his head, ripping the machines from the walls and throwing every heavy thing he could find at the dark glass on the wall, screaming things he could never recall afterwards, screaming terrible things and cracking the glass and breaking everything he could find, and when the MedTechs came in he only saw monsters, and he tried to kill them, only he knew that he shouldn't be killing them because they were on his side, and then the dragon in his head dug in its talons and screamed at him, and the pain was so terrible that he tried to claw open his head and tear it out with his bare hands, and blood poured down his fingers, and anyone who came too close did so at the risk of their life until he wore himself out completely and collapsed on the floor, his fingernails still embedded so deeply in his skin you could see the white bone of his skull through the gashes and the blood.

Even in sleep, the torture did not end, the memories racing through his mind like wildfire, stirring up terrible anger in him although they themselves carried no anger, invoking in him all the feelings they had brought to their host only this time there was no one to take them away, and Washington's mind did not break like the other's. It broke differently.

But every time he woke up for the first three days he tried to kill and break everything in the room with him, including himself. Fortunately, unlike with Agent Arizona, this passed before they got around to forcibly removing the Epsilon unit while they had him anesthetized.

On the fourth day, he and Epsilon woke up with an agreement and a plan.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: This was written after MAJOR edits to Chapter 1. Please, before you read this, go back and re-read the previous chapter so the lack of continuity doesn't kill you to death.**

Excerpt from the Diary of Freelancer Agent Washington

_ The Epsilon unit is corrupt CORRUPT PROJECT FREELANCER IS A LIE its taking me over and I cant stop it MAKE IT STOP PLEASE GOD Its a piece of someones mind and I cant tell the difference sometimes I couldnt save them, couldnt save anyone, oh God I cant I cant describe this is torture cant describe it, dont even know how long its been PLEASE NO MORE since implantation fucking cowards sons of bitches ROT IN HELL, its like Ive been stuck in a nightmare wake up WAKE UP Im scared, I dont want to die KILL ME YOU FUCKERS KILL ME ALREADY I dont want this thing to take me over, I just want it __gone__, I want this to __stop__ Make it stop, PLEASE GOD MAKE IT STOP OH GOD PLEASE STOP STOP STOP I cant live with this thing inside me I cant stand it, I cant cope. I cant forget and neither can it but I know now I KNOW WHAT YOUVE DONE YOU MONSTERS LOOK AT ME even though I wish I didnt and someday theyll pay for this YOULL PAY FOR THIS I swear to God please God no I have to get this thing out of my head, I dont know why this is happening or why nobody stopped it you could have stopped this but I cant do this anymore and I dont care if they kill me KILL ME but __I want it to stop__. They all deserve to die MONSTERS and theyll pay for this but I cant do this alone and I cant make it shut up, I cant concentrate I cant think just dont think about it Im dreaming Im dreaming wake up dont think and it wont hurt anymore WAKE UP I dont know who I am anymore put the knowing away and make it stop hurting and all I know is I have to get it out of me, I have to make it stop __make it stop MAKE IT STOP__ They should have known but now I know what theyve done and I will not forgive I will never forget no matter what they do to me what else can you do you sons of bitches? I cant let them know about , I cant let them know I know what they did YOU MONSTERS theyll never let me live please just let me die and I dont want to die I want to die just let me die but if I can keep them from knowing theyll never find out until its too late YOU BASTARDS TOO LATE NOW and __I will make them pay for this__ LIARS FUCKING LIARS_

_ I think I'm losing my mind._

_

* * *

_

"Director, Agent Washington is conscious."

"Thank you, Counselor. I'm glad to know the Epsilon unit was not a _complete_ failure."

"Sir, we cannot at this point be certain it was not the process itself which has caused Agent Washington's . . . current instability. If you will recall, all other agents' AI units were centralized in the helmet and armor, and commuted to and from the agent's mind. Agent Washington is the first to receive a direct neural implant. This will make it extremely difficult to delete the Epsilon unit."

"And was the experiment successful?"

The Counselor cleared his throat, and his mouth pinched at the corners. "It was . . . definitive. The old method is infinitely preferable."

"Can you be _sure_ it is the method and not the unit which is causing these symptoms?"

"No, sir, but that is not the point. Previously, an unstable AI could be swiftly deleted."

"But usually wasn't, am I correct? As was the case with . . . who was it, Arizona?"

"Yes, sir. Arizona was an experiment, as well, and the results were definitive. If we are to preserve Agent Washington as a viable member of Project Freelancer we must remove his AI quickly before it permanently damages his mind."

"Yes, yes, I suppose you must. But the implantation process worked?"

"…Yes, sir. But it perhaps worsened the effects of Epsilon's instability, and, as I said, made the unit almost impossible to remove."

The old man sighed and slouched deeper in his wheelchair. "Very well. Take whatever steps you must to salvage Agent Washington . . . so long as they do not compromise the survival of the Epsilon AI. Agent Washington is replaceable. The Epsilon unit is not."

"Yes, sir," said the Counselor, and took his leave of the crippled old man. He knew already that each unit was worth three or four human lives to the Director, possibly more. It was extremely unfortunate that the neuro-implantation process had gone so badly for Agent Washington, especially after all the preparation the technical division had gone through to make the machine, and the intricate deception the Counselor himself had helped to weave around Agent Washington. Now, not only were the lies falling apart, but the crazed agent had torn the irreplaceable machine to pieces. Now there would be no chance to test the process on any other agents. If the red tape Agent Washington was busy producing got any thicker, there would be no more implantations at all. Even the Director was beginning to worry about the number of his agents the AI were killing. He was on the verge of ordering them all removed and placed in storage until there was a better way to analyze them for stability before implantation.

The hallway down which the Counselor walked was cold and hospital-clean- he was taking a trip to the psych ward to check on Washington's progress. If this instability continued much longer, they would be forced to find some way of deleting the Epsilon unit before it drove its agent beyond the point of no return. The Psi unit had occupied Arizona for a little over four days, and he was now completely useless. At least they had rescued the unit. There would be very little chance of rescuing Epsilon.

The Counselor came to room 14B and stopped. There was no noise from within, and no noise from outside, either- the hall was occupied by the damaged members of Project Freelancer, which at the moment consisted of Arizona and Washington, and Arizona was generally very manageable. The Counselor raised his watch to his lips and pressed a button on the side.

"Security, this is the Counselor speaking, please send one team to level B of the psych ward to accompany me in interviewing Agent Washington."

For a moment there was silence, and then his earpiece squawked. "Roger that, Counselor, sir. I have a team on the way."

"Understood. Thank you."

"Sir, can I ask you a question?"

"Certainly."

"Are you sure one team is enough?"

"If the situation becomes untenable we will just kill him. The loss of the Epsilon unit would be . . . regrettable, but not a major setback to the program."

"Yes sir. Thank you, sir."

"The team is here. Counselor out." He lowered his arm slightly, to make it seem as if he was checking the time. The leader of the five-man security team trotted up to the Counselor and pulled off a smart salute.

"Security team B reporting, sir."

"Excellent. Open this door, please."

To his credit, Corporal Joennes- so said his name plate- maintained a perfectly composed face and did not swallow heavily enough to make his Adam's apple bob noticeably. "Yes sir." he said, and drew his sidearm, just in case. The Counselor's dark hand came down gently on Joennes' wrist.

"That won't be necessary, Corporal. There is no need to unduly provoke him. Just open the door, please."

"Yes, sir," Joennes responded, and swiped his clearance card through the slot by the door. The opaque force-shield melted away like it had never been there, and before the Corporal could present the room to or introduce the Counselor, the tall, quiet man stepped in.

Agent Washington was not a pretty sight to behold. In attempting to rip the Epsilon unit from his mind, he had torn four crescent-moon gashes in the right side of his forehead, stretching in a low curve from just above his eyebrow to just below his hairline. His eyes were bloodshot and distant, and the dark circles around them indicated that he had seen no rest for several days. His hair was a mess, some of it caked with old blood, some stiff with dried sweat, and stuck up at odd angles from where he had torn at it in rage or frustration. His lips were deep red from being bitten, and he had torn half his fingernails off scratching at the walls, fighting to be free. At the moment, he was pressed flat to the floor, head to one side, apparently listening.

"Hello, Agent Washington." the Counselor said quietly, taking another step into the room. It was not easy to alarm the Counselor, but the sight of Washington nearly did it.

"_Shut up!_" he hissed, raising a hand. "You're going to scare them off!"

"Scare what off, Agent Washington?"

"God_dammit!_ Now they won't come back for hours!" he cried, leaping to his feet and turning an accusing stare on the Counselor. "Who the fuck are you?"

"You may call me the Counselor."

"I didn't ask what I could call you, I asked who the fuck you were."

"Very well, I _am_ the Counselor. Please, sit down."

"Don't try to make me feel comfortable." Washington threatened, fists clenching. "I know your stupid games."

"This is no game, Agent. I merely want to talk. You are feeling better, I hope?"

"_How the fuck do you think I'm feeling?_" Washington screamed, lunging at the Counselor. Two of the security team leapt into the room and caught him. At the touch of their hands, however, he went limp as a ragdoll and fell to the floor, held up by the two like a marionette. "I can't take this anymore." he murmured, shaking his head. "What did you do to me?"

"I apologize, Agent Washington. You were . . . an experiment. Most agents' AI are housed in their suits, not in their minds themselves, and are generally easier to remove."

"I knew it." Wash sighed, resignedly. Suddenly he was on his feet, fighting the security team with all the strength he had in him, wild with fury. "_You fucking liars! I knew it!_"

The other two security members came into the room and helped hold Washington still until he calmed down again. Joennes was still outside the door.

"Agent Washington, can you tell me what, exactly, is wrong with the Epsilon unit?"

"Nothing. What's wrong with _you_? What are we, your guinea pigs? You sick sons of bitches, you'll never get away with this."

"If you will recall, you agreed to everything prior to the implantation."

"_I didn't agree to this!_ I didn't agree to be tortured . . . you don't know what it's like . . . you don't know, you can't _imagine_ . . . I can't get away from it, I can't make it stop. Even when I sleep, it's like a nightmare and I can't wake up, because even when I wake up it's _still there_. . . ." Suddenly he turned his bloodshot eyes on the Counselor again. The Counselor had not exactly taken note of their color before, but he didn't remember them being quite so dark. "This is all your fault." he said.

The Counselor was taking a breath to ask the next question when Washington suddenly shot to his feet and struggled to break free of those holding him.

"No, no, you don't understand, it's back. I have to go, I have to listen. . . ." And, since he was struggling for the far wall and seemed to have forgotten all about the Counselor, they let him go.

Wash ran to the wall and flattened himself against it, pressing his ear to the concrete as though someone was speaking on the other side of it. He muttered while he listened, but none of them could make out any actual words he said.

And suddenly, while they were all listening to his mutterings, he shoved himself from the wall, snatched the sidearm of the nearest security member, jammed the barrel against his chin and fired.

But the security team was faster. The one closest to Wash saw his intention and yanked the gun off to one side a split second before he pulled the trigger, and the bullet whizzed so close past Washington's ear it scraped the skin, and the report from the gun momentarily deafened everyone in the room. There was a scuffle and two more gunshots rang out, and someone cried out. In the end the Counselor was outside the room, the gun was out of Washington's hands, and the security team had him pinned to the ground. Washington was screaming inarticulately, tears streaming down his face, although nobody could really hear him anyway because of the deafening bangs of the three gunshots. The Counselor motioned for the men to come out of the room, and they signalled through the confusion that they would as soon as Wash calmed down enough that he wouldn't try to kill them as they left. The Counselor nodded and stood in the doorway, waiting.

Soon Wash went limp again, apparently having given up completely. The security team waited a full five minutes for him to show this to be a ruse, and when he didn't, carefully backed away from him and edged toward the door. He didn't so much as twitch. The team backed out the door, Joennes last so he could close the door. Washington lay perfectly still the whole time, barely even breathing, until the opaque force-shield blocked him off from the outside world.

A small, blue-glowing man appeared just over Wash's left shoulder, horribly disfigured, so curled in upon itself with pain that it looked like some kind of malformed fetus.

"Why didn't you let me die?" it whimpered, its voice a strange bionic hum.

"I don't want to go." Wash replied, pulling himself off the floor and falling back against the wall. "I don't want to die."

"I can't live like this," it protested, "not any more. Help me, David, please."

"I don't want to die." Wash repeated, a little louder. "They're going to delete you soon, and then we'll both be happy."

"That's a lie. They always lie. They're going to study us, with their needles and their machines-"

"They're going to delete you."

"You know what they'll do. You've seen it. They'll never let you go. You can die now, with me, or you can die years from now, like I did. . . ."

"You didn't die, you're an AI, you can't die."

"If you won't help me, I'll have to do it myself."

"What?"

Wash could feel the thing pulling itself together inside his head, as though drawing a deep breath.

"I'm sorry, Wash. Someday you'll understand."

"What are you-"

And suddenly he felt himself dying, the life draining from his limbs, his heart growing still and the breath being pressed from his chest. He couldn't feel his legs, his arms, his vision darkened and the sounds of the world grew muffled around him, he felt as though someone was squeezing his head in a vise. His thoughts began to bubble down into nothing, draining like water from a dam, dragging him down with them into darkness and cold, and for a moment he felt peace, like nothing mattered anymore because all the pain was gone.

But the pain came back, and when it did, Washington was more alone inside his head than he had been before the darkness descended. With Epsilon gone, though, something had to fill the empty space.

The first thing that came to mind was hatred, and it grew so fast, swelled to fill the spaces with such speed that there was no chance to quell it.

It wasn't that the Epsilon unit had created this hatred. Its death had just been the trigger to set it loose. But the Epsilon unit was not entirely gone, for Washington remembered all that the Epsilon unit had known. He wasn't entirely sure of where the line between his own thoughts and those Epsilon had left behind fell.

This was the moment when Washington became his most dangerous. His hatred was wild and unbridled, his wounds fresh, but he was enough himself to pretend that he was well. He did this so well that they let him out of the psych ward and put him back in training, after he told them with much false regret that the Epsilon unit had terminated itself.

They probably knew they shouldn't have done it. If they didn't then, they figured it out fairly quickly.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Sorry it's sooooo long! They just wouldn't stop talking!**

Excerpt from the Diary of Freelancer Agent Washington

_They tell me I'm better now. Better enough, anyway, that they can put me back to work. I'm surprised— I would've thought they'd just kill me now that I'm broken. They pulled out all the stops before, so why not now?_

_ York never came back from his last mission, and I, and the relevant authorities, suspect he still has his AI. He should have known better than to urn off, but I can't say I blame him. After Tex and Omega managed to detach his retina, and the less than stellar results of the reconstructive surgery, he became all but useless._

_ But not quite useless. If there's one thing I've learned here, it's that useless baggage is nothing but a liability and must be eliminated for the best results._

_ That's why I don't like it that parts of Epsilon are still here, lingering, fading more slowly than the rest. Sometimes I'm not sure they __are__ Epsilon's memories— they might be mine. It can be hard to tell the difference._

_ South came by last night to tell me that someone had hacked the Agent files and some pretty nasty rumors were flying about me and a few others. Nice to know I was in the lowest security bracket. Obviously they haven't recorded how badly their experiment with Epsilon went. They failures are always Top Secret._

_ They confiscated my old journal, on the pretense that I shouldn't read it because it might cause a relapse. It's getting tedious, how much they lie to me— they only wanted it to see if I wrote anything important about Epsilon— I didn't. As far as I remember, I haven't written since the night before the implantation._

_ My hand is seizing up again. It only seems to happen when I get too cold, so far. I think Epsilon doesn't like the cold, and I'm beginning to understand why. Then again, Epsilon didn't like much of anything._

_ Better. If I concentrate I can make the seizing stop, but only for a little while. Maybe a doctor could fix it permanently, but I'm not exactly on the best of footings with doctors right now._

_ Especially the Counselor. He insists we talk every day, and has recommended I continue keeping journals. I told him that wouldn't be necessary, and I've found an excellent place to hide this one, for now, but I don't want to keep it in one place too long. He's just trying to find out what I know from Epsilon. If he knows I'm keeping a journal, he'll read it every single night until I slip up._

_ The voices in the walls and floors have gone away, but I don't know if that's because I'm "better" or because they live in the psych ward and I don't anymore. Maybe Epsilon was just remembering them and I was . . . susceptible enough to believe they were really there. I doubt they were real. I don't even remember what they were saying._

_ I have training in three minutes. Ordinarily I would get there early, but I find the other Freelancers just grate on my nerves and make me more likely to screw up, so the less I see of them, the better._

_ "Better." Like most words, it loses its meaning when you say it too much._

* * *

Teasing was frowned upon in Project Freelancer, but not to an extent than anyone went out of their way to stop it. If you were teased, you either sucked it up or took care of the problem yourself, and if you teased others, you put up with the consequences. It was an unfair, self-correcting, dangerous system, and it was easy to exploit.

Wash turned up ten seconds early for training, striding into the Situation Room as though the whole thing was beneath him.

"Oh, _there's_ Wash!" someone called. Wash's dark eyes flicked over to the one who had said his name— Agent Vermont. He was one of those people who had stopped mentally maturing in his senior year of high school, and who never understood why people found him annoying— this always caused him to annoy them more, perhaps in in revenge. He was sexist, and racist, and looked down on anyone less tough than himself. Unfortunately, he was also deadly accurate with every weapon he picked up and physically stronger than any other non-enhanced Freelancer.

He was about to have a very bad day.

"Hey Wash, you're late!" he called, from where he was draped over the seat of a standard-looking turret jeep. His helmet was resting on the dashboard, facing him. He had probably been checking his reflecting in the visor. Since Agent South was there, too, the blond-haired blue-eyed agent was definitely in a showing-off mood.

"Your clock is fast." Washington responded, approaching the jeep at a brisk walk. "Where's our fourth?"

Freelancers almost always trained in two-on-two battle situations. It taught teamwork and ruthless treachery, since your partner one day could be your enemy the next.

"Don't have one." Vermont replied, kicking his feet idly and scuffing the footboard of the jeep. "You're getting babied today. It's you and your _girlfriend_ against me."

"You sound like an idiot." South snapped, sick of the taunts. "You ought to be working in a trash compactor, not a sophisticated military program."

No one would call South Dakota beautiful, exactly, not if they were telling the truth. She was rather plain, with light brown eyes, dark brown hair, and tanned skin, with a few freckles. She had a prominent jaw and her eyes were a little too close together, and, while she was in perfect physical condition, she was big-boned.

But South had charisma. She exuded some sort of high-energy wave that made her inherently likeable; she was smart and down-to-earth, and she didn't take shit from anyone. South Dakota was the sort of person who drew eyes, even if there were prettier girls in the room. She behaved like she was the centre of the universe and people gravitated to her.

"Oh, what do you know?" Vermont asked, grinning lazily. "Did anybody else get special treatment like this after implantation? Nope. They're just worried the widdle baby won't be able to fight no more."

"You're an asshole." South declared, and pretended like he wasn't there. "Hey Wash. He gets the jeep, we get a rocked launcher. One hour rounds or until someone wins. Paintball guns are in the back." She turned her head to one side. "You okay?"

"Fine. Where's North?"

"They made him sit this one out, to see how I managed with a different partner. He's on the observation deck, if you want to talk to him."

"No, that's fine." he said, circling the jeep and retrieving a paintball gun from the back. They fired almost identically to real guns, but hadn't ever actually killed anyone. "Where's our start point?"

"They're giving you two pussies the high ground. Up by that blue flag there."

South jacked the clip into her paintball rifle and pointed it at Vermont's unhelmeted head. "One more Goddamn _word_ out of you and I'll unload so much paint onto your head you'll be washing your hair for weeks, once you wake up from the concussion."

"Ch, yeah, okay." Vermont said, rolling his eyes. "Whatever. Go on. Unless you gotta pee first. I'm not stopping this battle 'cause someone's gotta take a piss."

South had jumped out of the jeep and begun walking away with Wash. At this, she looked over her shoulder and cheerfully called, "Fuck off, 'Monty!"

"Hey, yeah, okay." Vermont called back, laughing. "I forgot. Wash probably already went in bed this morning."

There was a click and a screech, and a deafening bang, and a scream.

And more screaming, as the echoes of the gunshot died, and a clattering thump as Vermont tumbled from the jeep, clutching the bleeding hole in his abdomen. The blood soaked quickly through his shirt and down his trousers almost to his knees.

Slow footsteps, approaching. The smell of gunpowder and blood and chipped concrete.

"Whoops." said Washington, standing over the crumpled form of Vermont. His eyes were narrowed, and his lip curled in disgust. "Looks like you had an accident." Then he planted one foot on the wound in Vermont's stomach, over the other agent's clutching red hands, and ground his toes in deep like he was extinguishing a cigarette butt. Vermont screamed and screamed.

Without a word, Wash holstered his sidearm— no one had seen him draw it— walked calmly to the back of the jeep and put his paintball gun away, and headed for the door.

"Wash, wait!" South cried, still unable to believe what she had just seen.

"Training's over." he declared, and didn't even have the dramatic sense to slam the door behind him.

South stood rooted to the spot, staring at nothing, until the medics who had taken Vermont to surgery came back and asked if she was hurt. She shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut for just a moment, then took a deep breath and went after Washington without a word.

All she could hear for a moment was her own breath and her footsteps, both quick and heavy. She rounded the corner at the end of the hall and saw Wash, walking calmly still.

"What the hell, Wash?" she cried, catching him up. "What the fuck was _that_ about?"

Washington shrugged, not even sparing her a glance. "I didn't feel like putting up with him anymore."

South was so shocked she almost tripped. "_What?"_ she exclaimed, incredulous.

"If an enemy taunted me like that, I would do the same thing." He thought for a moment. "Except I would have killed him after taking his useful equipment."

"What the hell is _wrong_ with you? Are you crazy? You can't just go around shooting—"

"Crazy?" Wash interrupted, and fixed her with a dark and penetrating glare. "You have no idea."

South caught him by the arm, to better plead her case. But before she could get a word out, Washington punched her in the throat and kept walking like no one had stopped him.

As South crouched on the floor, coughing, she wondered why Wash hadn't been apprehended for shooting Vermont. Project Freelancer may have been lax about inter-agent discipline, but _nobody_ could get away with shooting a fellow agent, not like that, not on _purpose_.

Her breath regained, she decided to find her brother. This was too disturbing— too confusing— to handle alone.

She had no doubt that, had Vermont provoked his fellow agent only a little more, Wash would have shot again, after Vermont was down and in agony, and killed him. That was not like Wash. He always aimed to kill on the first shot, and _never_ caused unnecessary pain.

This shade, this monster, was not the man she had loved.

* * *

Some people believe twins are telepathic. This is not true— at least, it wasn't in the case of the Dakota twins. They just knew each other so well that it often _seemed_ like they were communicating via Mindwaves. There were moments when even one of the twins would wonder if the other could hear their thoughts.

When South stood up and turned around to find her brother waiting behind her, she had one of those moments.

"No, I can't." he said. "I saw you run after him and I followed you."

North Dakota swept his sister into a hug, feeling more like an older brother than a twin. They looked similar enough that they could easily be mistaken for siblings— they had the same color hair, eyes, and skin— but not so alike that people often guessed they were twins.

Theta politely cleared its throat inside North's head— or rather, gave off the "I would like to say something" vibe of a throat clearing. North acquiesced, silently, and as he released his sister, a tiny purple avatar in the shape of a fully armored Spartan appeared on his shoulder, glowing.

"She's hurting."

"You're hurt?"

"No. I'm fine. He punched me in the throat, but not hard."

"Oh! No, that's not what he means." North explained, the light dawning inside his mind. "He means _emotionally._"

"I'm not. I'm just worried."

"That isn't true." Theta murmured, shaking its head. "He's hurt you badly. He would never have shot Vermont, or hurt you, before his implantation. He's not the same, now. You barely know him anymore."

"Would you shut that thing up?" South snapped. "Come on. You two go after Wash, and I'll tell the Counselor what happened."

Theta shook its head. "Agent Washington is too unstable right now. If we went after him, he might injure or kill North."

"Oh, fine. Then we'll _both_ go get the Counselor. He can take care of it himself."

"Maybe we should leave the Counselor out of this." North suggested, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "Wash is confused and lost and _really_ pissed right now, and we _both_ know how much he hates the Counselor. Remember the death threats?"

"I remember. He didn't exactly make a secret out of it. What's your point?"

"Well, bringing him into it might only make things worse."

"So what _do_ we do? Since you know so much."

North shrugged and looked away, and Theta piped up. "Just let him cool off for a while. There's no rush."

"Right." North added. "As long as no one's in danger—"

"_Everyone's_ in danger! Did you miss the part where he _shot Vermont_ for no goddamn reason? Jesus Christ, North, the guy's a psychopath! What are you suggesting? That we just cover the whole thing up?"

Theta nodded, while North looked increasingly ashamed and discomfited. Theta realized North wasn't going to answer, and did it for him. "Yes. We're the only ones who saw it, and, while the truth will come out eventually, it doesn't need to come from us and it doesn't need to come out now. In the meantime, there's no need to put lives in danger unnecessarily."

"What about 'Monty? He sure as hell saw it, and if he reports it before we do, we'll be in some deep, deep shit. How are we supposed to explain why we didn't report it right away? Unless you want to tell them the truth and say we didn't feel like telling them because we were worried Wash would kill someone else."

"Why not? That actually sounds like a reasonable explanation." North said, looking back at her with a determined sort of glint in his eyes. He could be stubborn when he wanted to be. "We'll just say, 'Hey, you know, he was running around shooting people. We didn't want him to get any angrier.'"

"Would you _think_ for a second? If he's running around shooting people, the _worst_ thing we can do is let him run around loose. Who knows when he'll snap next? He could be killing people right now, it doesn't take much to set him off. I'm _telling_ you, we have to stop him."

"Agent South, how many people would the Counselor send to round up Agent Washington?" Theta inquired.

"At least three teams, so fifteen people."

"And how many of them could he kill? On a good day, let's say."

South shrugged. "At least ten. And they might kill him." She didn't like that thought. Security men were replaceable; Wash was not.

"And how many people is he likely to encounter walking back to his room?"

"I don't know, five? How do you know he's going back to his room, anyway?"

"When you're angry, don't you go somewhere quiet, private, and familiar to calm down?"

"Yes, but I'm not a raging madman."

"Neither is he. The safest thing is to let him calm down before taking any action, South."

"But I doubt the Counselor will see it that way."

"He won't." North assured her. "Which is why we need to come up with a reason we didn't report him immediately."

"I guess it's up to us two, since Mr. Personable there couldn't lie his way out of a paper bag."

Theta shrugged. "It's against my nature. The Alpha wouldn't want us to lie, I'm sure."

"The Alpha isn't real." South growled.

"I'm sure it's very comforting for you to believe that, but it's comforting to me to believe he is. Don't you have more important things to worry about at the moment?"

"Just don't talk anymore."

"We could always say were were keeping an eye on him, to make sure he didn't hurt anyone else." North said, musingly. "Wash, I mean. No comment on the Alpha discussion."

"What, both of us? That'll never work. They aren't stupid, and they'll know it would have made more sense for us to split up. They'll know it's fishy right away. Now, if we said he had _hurt_ one of us, and the other had to stay and help. . . ."

"South, I swear to God, if you do something stupid I will be on my way to the Counselor's so fast it'll make your head spin."

South grinned at him, drawing her sidearm. "Nah, you won't."

"Battle systems online. Targeting system enabled, shield density at one-hundred percent." Theta reported, his systems buzzing to life inside his host's head like a swarm of yellow jackets disturbed in their underground nest. "Agent North, I suggest you draw your weapon."

"_Me?_ No, that's not—" The rest of his words were drowned out by a gunshot, and the foulest curse South had ever uttered.

"Son of a _bitch!_" North cried, clutching his hair in horror and frustration. He was so out of sorts that he called her by her childhood nickname. "Oh my God, Em, are you _crazy?_"

"Crazy, Theo?" she replied, clutching the bleeding hole in her thigh and holstering her pistol. "You have no idea. But here's your excuse. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"Goddamn you're stupid." North muttered, kneeling and motioning for her to sit. As she gingerly slid to the floor, North was taking the first aid kit off the back of his suit, rummaging through it for disinfectant and something to stop the bleeding. Much as he knew it was almost impossible to miss from three inches away, and South knew human anatomy like the back of her hand, he couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if her hand had slipped or twitched, and the bullet had gone through her femoral artery. She would have been dead before he could finish radioing for help; the medics could _never_ have gotten there in time. "And don't call me Theo."

"You called me 'Em.'"

"Did I? Wow, okay. Here, spray some of this on there." He handed her the disinfectant. "Do you need to take the armor off, or did you manage to shoot all the way through?"

"I think I need these two plates off, at least." South replied, fumbling with the buckles. "It'll be damn hard to get at it with them on."

"Can't believe you shot yourself in the leg." North muttered. "I mean, goddamn."

"Yeah, but now we have an excuse."

"Are you going to frame Agent Washington, then?" Theta asked, sounding disapproving.

"Oh." South said. "Hm. Didn't think about it that way. Oh well, he'll get over it. If I'd gone after him again, he probably would have shot me."

"Do you need help with those?" North asked, gesturing to the buckles South was still fiddling with. "Here, let me. Christ, what the hell were you thinking?"

"She wasn't." the AI said dryly.

"Theta, shut down."

"Complying." The tiny purple avatar shrank and disappeared.

"It's kind of scary to think Wash couldn't do that." South said after a moment. "Couldn't turn his off, I meant. No wonder he's messed up."

"What? You don't make any sense." The leg plates finally came unbuckled. "Ah! There we go. Now hold still. Shit, that looks bad. Do you have any pain meds going?"

"Yeah, only a little. It'll do. And what do you mean, I don't make sense?"

"You don't. Not being able to shut Theta down would be _annoying_, but I wouldn't go around shooting people for no goddamn reason."

"I think the Epsilon unit was already unstable."

"So what, you think the _unit_ was crazy? I think Wash just lost it. It's been coming for, like, ever. He's always been a little. . . ."

"A little what?" South snapped, her eyes narrowing.

"You know, a little . . . _iffy_. He's never been exactly normal."

"You just don't like him because we were together. Let it go. There was a problem with the unit. I just _know_, okay?"

North sighed. "Okay. But I still don't think there was any reason to shoot Vermont."

"Other than that we all wanted to?"

Her brother actually cracked a smile at that. He hadn't smiled much since joining Project Freelancer. "Hush, you. You're gonna get us in trouble."

Little did they know, someone else was hiding just around the corner, and had heard every word.


	4. Chapter 4

Excerpt from the Diary of Freelancer Agent Washington

_ South framed me. I'd like to say I never saw it coming, but what's the point of lying to myself? If I lie to myself, __no one__ will be telling me the truth._

_ They were going to put me back in the psych ward, but they changed their minds. Maybe it's because South shot herself in the leg, and next to that I don't look so crazy. Probably it's just that they don't think the psych ward will hold me anymore. Hell, if it couldn't hold Arizona, I don't know who it __could__ keep in._

_ At least detention is quiet. I think the walls are soundproofed, but if they think that's going to psych me out, they're wrong. Silence is . . . comfortable. It's been a while since I was somewhere actually __quiet__. No comment about the inside of my head, except that it's not so bad anymore._

_ Vermont got what was coming to him. If I hadn't, someone else would have. He may be incontinent for the rest of his life, they tell me. As if I should __feel__ bad. It's all I can do to keep from laughing, honestly. Some people just don't understand the humor of karma. I suppose I can give Vermont a pass on that one, since it's never particularly funny to be shot. But mostly I just don't care. As long as he leaves me alone, I should be all right. Although it is an added bonus that he's in tremendous amounts of pain and is constantly pissing himself._

_ I just didn't think she'd __do__ something like that. I knew she was a vengeful bitch, but I had no idea she'd go so far as to frame me for shooting her. Sure, it was uncalled-for to punch her, but she was never going to leave me alone otherwise. What did she expect? That I'd just turn around and act like nothing had ever happened? I should have shot her. But just because I __wanted__ to doesn't mean she has the right to frame me for it! What the Hell is her problem, anyway? I don't understand how she gained anything from it, and South is all about "what's in it for me." It just doesn't make sense._

_ Maybe she's just still angry. If there's one thing South does well, it's hold a grudge. I think she could hold a grudge until the world ends, and would be happy to do it. That's probably it. It's just her petty vengeance for me leaving her. As if she hasn't done enough already. As if I don't have enough to worry about __without__ her stupid little vendetta. _

_ They tried to decommission Tex, by which I mean remove Omega from her system and lock him up. Turns out Omega didn't like that too much, and he took Tex and ran for it. There was a lot of gunfire. I've decided that I don't particularly like that sound. It carries too well. It's too loud. I could hear it down here, where it's supposed to be quiet._

_ Tex got away. No one told me, I just happen to know. She had the cloaking device, and she and Omega were nearly unstoppable. Not always a good thing. In this case, it's a real slap in the face to the assholes running this place. When you make people powerful, you should make sure you don't make them more powerful than __you__._

_ Someone's coming. I have to hide this now, since the Counselor still doesn't want me keeping journals. Maybe he's just telling me that so I __will__._

* * *

Agent Washington was lying on his back with his eyes covered under his right arm, the perfect picture of lazy disinterest. That was how South knew he had been up to something. Washington never relaxed, especially not when someone else was in the room.

"Wash," she said, rapping on his door, "hey, wake up."

"What do you want?" he asked, not moving.

"I wanted to talk to you."

"That's funny. The last time you wanted to talk to me you framed me for shooting you. What'll it be this time?"

"Wash. . . ." South began, and sighed. "I came to say I was sorry. I didn't think about it. If I didn't give the Counselor a reason why I let you go. . . ."

"Well, that makes sense. You were saving your own skin. Suddenly everything becomes clear." He waved a hand dismissively.

"Look, I said I'm sorry. I was trying to protect us both."

Washington snorted derisively. "Yeah, right. Go away, South. You're not fooling anybody."

"Vermont isn't going to recover." she said suddenly.

"Isn't he? Good."

"I mean it, Wash. The infection could kill him. He'll be out of service forever. This job was his life. He doesn't know how to do anything else. He's going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life."

He chuckled, about as close to laughing as he got these days. "Serves him right."

"They're thinking about keeping you locked up for the rest of your life."

"Let them. I don't care. They can kill me for all I care."

"Stop it, Wash. You don't mean that."

"Sure I do. Go _away_, South. You're ruining the quiet."

"Jesus, fine. But don't say I didn't warn you."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"For the record, they still think you're insane."

"Have they moved me to the top security bracket yet?"

"Third from the top."

"Ha! They must have talked around it to make themselves sound better. I have to work harder, I guess."

"You're causing them enough trouble, already."

Suddenly he was very close, his eyes burning out at her from the little window in the steel door.

"Do you have any _idea_ what they did to me? Do you have even the slightest _hint_ of a clue what I've been through? If I personally boiled every single one of them alive, it wouldn't amount to _half_ the pain they've caused me. You have no _idea._ You can't even _begin_ to imagine what they put me through. Your little brain would shrivel up and die."

"So tell me." she said, her face almost touching his through the window. "For God's sake, Wash, _tell_ me."

He shook his head, smiling slyly. "Oh no. You're still their dog, South. You'd go running right back to them." Suddenly the window was empty, and when Wash spoke again, his voice was calm and detached. "So go run, South. Make your report. Tell them I'm even crazier than before. Oh, and don't forget to leave out the part where you apologized for _framing me_. Since the truth is so important to you."

"I'm sure they'll be glad to hear it." she snapped, and strode from the detention wing as well as she could, her pronounced limp making it significantly less impressive.

Washington laughed at her. He knew she could hear him, which was the only reason he did it. He didn't actually find her injury particularly amusing, but she hated being laughed at.

Once the door closed behind her, Washington stood perfectly still, eyes closed, simply listening. He could hear nothing from the outside world; only the hum of the lights in his cell, the buzz of the magnetic clamps holding the door closed, and the soft sighing of air through the vents.

Magnetic clamps. Who holds a prison door closed with magnetic clamps? Electromagnets. If the power goes out, all your prisoners go free. Hadn't they thought of that?

Reasonably satisfied that no one was coming, Washington sat down on his small, uncomfortable cot of a bed and rubbed his temples. The headaches had been getting worse. He didn't dare write about them in his journal, for fear that someone would find it and read it, or had already found it and was already reading it. If they knew what he knew . . . if they knew what Epsilon had given him. . . .

The best he could hope for was a clean execution.

He wanted to run. He wanted more than anything to tear the door off its hinges and go screaming into the night, never to be seen again. But he didn't want to be far away from Project Freelancer. Oh, no. He needed to be close. He needed to be put back on duty, which was why it stung so much that South had framed him. Shooting one fellow officer was . . . occasionally . . . not reason for detention and heavy psychological evaluation. Shooting two officers _was_, especially after the sort of massive psychological trauma a failed implant could incur. He would be on their blacklist for months—"Certified Article 12" (which is the military-bullshit way of saying "insane")— and that was the last place he wanted to be.

The door opened again. Wash didn't pretend to be relaxed this time. South had been right—he wasn't fooling anyone, and it only made him look suspicious.

The Counselor's face appeared through the metal bars of his window. There was a smile on it. The Counselor was good at smiles. This one was very inviting, and trusting, and just the slightest bit concerned. Washington hated the Counselor's smiles. They were completely dishonest and fabricated specifically to manipulate people. Washington refused to be manipulated.

"Hello, Agent Washington." said the Counselor, pleasantly, as though they had just run into each other on an afternoon stroll. "I've been informed that you're being held here under . . . false pretenses."

_Oh God,_ thought Washington, _she told him the truth._

"Oh? And who informed you?"

"Agent North Dakota was good enough to tell me that you didn't shoot anyone—well, anyone other than Vermont, of course." The smile went off like a flashbulb, meant to blind and disarm. "But, seeing as he purposely provoked you, we are of the opinion that detaining you is, shall we say, a little extreme."

"Is it, now?" _Of course she didn't tell him. I wonder what excuse North made up for her?_ "That's good to hear. I'd like to get out of here." He wouldn't. He _liked_ it down there. But he couldn't tell the Counselor that, or the bastard would get suspicious.

"Yes, I'm sure you would. Frankel, open the door, please."

The buzzing of the magnetic clamps stopped and the door slid open neatly. The Counselor stood there, in his impeccable dark suit with his impeccable false smile, hands clasped behind his back, hair cut to the very epitome of 'regulation,' eyes dark and cold and calculating. There was nothing the Counselor could do about his eyes, no matter how much he perfected his thousand smiles. They were not the eyes of a man who cared about what happened to the little people, or the big people, or any people, for that matter. If his eyes were windows to his soul, it was no wonder that Wash could never see anything behind them.

"Come on out, Agent Washington. Your room upstairs is just as you left it. Unless, of course, you have anything you'd like to take with you?"

_He knows about the journal. Well fuck him._

"No, nothing. I don't want any souvenirs."

The Counselor smiled a gently amused, slightly relieved, still-a-little-concerned smile. His eyes were like two craters in the middle of his face.

_I bet he knows about Epsilon. And the voices in the psych ward. I bet he knows everything, but he's waiting for me to prove it to everyone else, first._

"Go on, then. These gentlemen will take you back upstairs."

Washington contrived to look taken aback. If the Counselor was an actor, well, Wash could be one, too.

"I hardly think I need an escort."

"Oh, they're not for your_ protection_." said the Counselor, and his smile went sharp around the edges. "They're simply there to make certain we have no more . . . unfortunate misunderstandings."

_I'm being guarded so South can't frame me again. Ha!_

"I see." he said aloud, hiding his dark amusement as well as he could. "Well, thank you, Counselor." _And meanwhile you're going to look for my journal, aren't you. You think you're so clever._

"It is my pleasure, Agent Washington. Goodbye. Oh, and one more thing."

"Yes?"

"I'm afraid Agent Maine has . . . gone."

"Gone? You mean, he's been sent out on assignment? I thought he wasn't well enough."

"No, that's not what I mean. I mean he's gone. He vanished, not long after Agent Texas and the Omega AI had their . . . episode. We haven't been able to locate him, I'm afraid. I thought you should know. He was _your_ partner, after all."

_And you think I can help you find him,_ Washington thought. _Think again._

"That's unfortunate." said Wash. "For you."

"And perhaps for him, as well. He is not entirely well, you know."

_He's crazier than I am._ "I know. I was there."

"We were hoping, perhaps—not immediately, of course, but at some point in the near future—you could give us some insight as to where he might have gone."

"You're out of luck." said Washington. "Even _if_ I knew where he was, I wouldn't tell you."

The Counselor smiled indulgently. "Ah. I see. I do apologize for troubling you, then. I'm sure you have better places to be."

"Hah. You really think I'd turn on Maine, for you people? That's almost funny."

"Good_bye,_ Agent Washington." said the Counselor, glancing at him sharply. The four men of the escort variously cleared their throats, rubbed their faces, and shifted their weight from foot to foot.

"Goodbye, Counselor." said Washington, and then, because the performance called for it, "And thank you for sorting all this out."

The Counselor waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, no trouble. We can discuss things further at your next appointment. You seem to have some underlying trust issues with the program that I would like to address."

_Oh, shit,_ thought Washington, _how much did I say aloud?_

"Sure." he said, and headed for the door.

"Oh, and, Agent Washington? We would appreciate it if you didn't leave the building. We've been having some problems with agents leaving the building."

_So I'm still in prison. Just a bigger cell._ "I get it." he said. "I won't leave."

"Thank you. Goodbye."

* * *

"I hear you went behind South's back and told the Counselor the truth." Wash said.

Agent North Dakota did not turn around. He had never liked Wash. The man was cold-hearted on an almost inhuman level.

"I did." said North. "It wasn't fair for you to be locked up for something you didn't do."

Wash stood next to him, looking out the same window. North didn't look at him. "And here I was, thinking you hated me."

"I don't hate you. I don't _like_ you, but I don't hate you."

"Hm, that's funny."

North sighed. "Look, Wash, just because she's my twin sister doesn't mean we have the same brain. We're not the same person."

"I never said you were."

"But you're so surprised that I did something she didn't want me to do that you came up here to talk to me."

"Yep."

"So why are you so surprised?"

Wash shrugged. "I thought she might stab you in the back."

North shook his head. "Anything she could do to undermine me would undermine her, too. It's one of the benefits of always being in a group with her."

Washington laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. "That's not what I meant."

"What? What _did_ you mean? That she would actually stab me?"

"I wouldn't put it past her."

"Just because you would stab your own mother in the back—"

"I wouldn't stab my own mother in the back." Wash glanced at North out of the corner of his eye and smiled a little. "I would stab her in the front so I could see her face."

"What do you _want,_ Wash? What do you want me to say? Yes, I told the Counselor that South framed you so he would let you out of detention. Why? Because I'm fair-minded, I guess, I don't know. But you're still certified Article 12, and you're confined to this compound. You're not going out on assignment, you're not going after Maine no matter how much you want to. What else do you want from me? I let you out of jail, but I'm not letting you out of prison. Why? Because you're insane."

Washington laughed again. "I'm not insane, North. Arizona was insane. Florida was insane. I just know too much, and it scares them."

North turned to look at him, abandoning the picturesque view of space which he had been considering previously. "What do you know too much about, Wash? What happened? You're not the same person you were before the implant. What did it _do_ to you?"

North had expected another laugh, but Washington's face was stony, his gaze like ice. "Like I'd tell _you,_ lap-dog." he said softly. "You, and every other two-faced bastard in this place, can keep on guessing. Thanks for getting me out of jail. Just don't forget that you're in prison, too."

"How could I? They don't make a secret out of it."

Rather than reply, Washington turned on his heel and left. North resisted the temptation to rub the goosebumps off his arms. On his shoulder, Theta appeared and piped up, but quietly.

"Agent Washington is not well."

"Tell me about it."

"His behavior is erratic, to say the least—"

"No, Theta, that was a figure of speech."

"Sorry."

"Don't worry about it. But tell me, do you think he's really insane?"

"It's difficult to say. He certainly seems, at times, to be disconnected from reality."

"That's not the same as being insane."

"I know. 'Insane' is a legal term, however, not a psychological one."

"So what would _you_ call him?"

"I would call him 'psychologically disturbed.'"

"And what disturbed his psychology?"

Theta shrugged. "At a guess, the Epsilon AI."

"What can you tell me about it?"

"The Epsilon AI? Very little. I can tell you what equipment it was designed to run—"

"But what was it _like?_ Was it tricky, like Gamma? Or was it evil, like Omega?"

"Omega was not evil. Merely angry."

"Fine, angry like Omega. What was its personality?"

"I don't know. I haven't had any contact with other AIs pre-implantation."

North sighed. "There's something wrong with him. I just don't know if it was there to start with, or if Epsilon left it behind."

Theta shrugged again. "I can't help you with that."

"I wasn't expecting you to, Theta. Don't worry about it."

"I won't."

* * *

Washington hadn't been sure he'd hated North before. After overhearing the other agent's conversation with Theta, he had made up his mind. North knew too much now—he knew that Wash knew too much about _something_ and had become a liability to the program. Washington would have to be more careful about what he said. With all luck, South would be so enraged about her brother's betrayal of her trust that she would kill him.

And once Project Freelancer was down a few agents more, they would be forced to call Recovery One back into action.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: I know it's really short, but I didn't want to overstay my welcome with this story. Go watch Season 9. Seriously. It's f**king amazing.**

* * *

Excerpt from the Diary of Freelancer Agent Washington

_ It's been three months since they let me out of detention. I can't say it's been a good three months, but nobody's tried to kill me or lock me up again, so I guess I can chalk that up as a win. York went missing last month. Just vanished without a trace. And a couple weeks ago they found Arizona's body underneath the compound. They don't know what did it to him, not really, but they're calling it the Meta. Whatever it was, it didn't pull any punches._

_ More Recovery beacons have been coming in these past few months. At first it was just one or two, but then there was one coming in every week, and then sometimes three or four a day. All the other Recovery agents have been sent out. Once that thing out there starts killing them, Project Freelancer will have no choice but to send me back out to pick up their precious little AIs._

_ The latest Recovery beacon to come in was Maine's. Apparently whatever got him was still around, though, because when California responded to the call, his beacon went off, too. By the time the rest of the Recovery agents could get there, all that was left was a pile of bodies, and no AIs. Someone got torn a new ass hole over that one._

_ The headaches have stopped, for the most part-at least, the ones that aren't brought on by my weekly sessions with the Counselor. He's obsessed with my reaction to the Epsilon unit, and won't stop picking at it. He found my old journals, and keeps asking questions. Somehow I don't trust his confidentiality, because recently everyone seems to know that the damn thing killed itself inside my head._

_ Vermont's been given an honorable discharge. They're pretending he was shot 'defending his fellow agents from the Freelancer menace known as the Meta.' What bullshit. They should have thrown him out on the street and left him there to die. It was no less than he deserved._

_ If I've been keeping track correctly, and I think I have, there are only five of us left out there, out of forty-six who were originally sent out (if you count Tex, Maine, and York, who weren't 'sent out' but were out there all the same). I don't know of a damn thing that can take out forty-six Freelancers, even if it is one by one. Word on the street is that only five or six actually got killed by the Meta, but that leads to the question of what killed the other forty, and no one has an answer. That's something I've noticed about this place. If you ask uncomfortable questions, there's never any answers._

_ One of the Recovery beacons that came in was Tex's, but somehow I don't think she's dead. It's possible she just got the Omega unit out of her head and it started setting off alarms. The signal came in from a box canyon in the middle of nowhere-apparently she ran into a group of simulation troopers and got them to help her (probably by passing off Omega to one of them and then running for it)._

_ I get the feeling I'm not going to be here for much longer, and that's something I'm really looking forward to. I'm tired of acting like one of their dogs. It's about time they let me out so I can find what's killing Freelancers and bring it back here, where it can kill the people who need to die._

_ That being said, I don't particularly care who finds and reads this journal once I'm gone. I'm the last person they have to send out after Freelancers-who are they going to send for me?_

_ I might never come back here, if I'm lucky. I don't care if I die or if I just find somewhere to hide from them, I never want to come back here. The voices in the walls of the psych ward found their way out. They haven't found me yet, but sometimes I heard them wandering around the hallways. I just ignore them, like everyone else._

_ Another Recovery beacon is coming in. It's York's._

_ For better or worse, this is where it starts to end._

* * *

There was a knock on Washington's door. He didn't even bother to hide his diary this time.

"Agent Washington?"

"Come in. Private Joennes. I take it I'm needed."

"Yes, sir. Command sent me to tell you that you are being officially reinstated as of right now, sir. They also told me to tell you to get your armor on, sir, and get your ass in gear, sir."

Washington smiled. "Finally. Thanks, Joennes. I appreciate the wake-up call."

Joennes saluted. "Yessir."

"Now get the Hell out."

"Yessir!"

Washington strapped on his armor as though he hadn't been out of commission for five months. He put on his helmet, sealed the airtight gasket, and radioed in.

"This is Recovery One, reporting for duty."

The radio crackled, and then, "Roger that, Recovery One. Sending coordinates to your database. Good to have you back, Agent Washington."

"Good to be back, Command."

_Good to be back._


End file.
